Sunday, November 18, 2012

Albatross

The albatrosses are almost all back now and the Black-footed albatrosses have started laying eggs. We still haven't seen the female Short-tailed albatross on Eastern Island yet. It's been fairly quiet on island since the Hawaiian group left, but there are a couple of things I have for show and tell.

We had a nice Veterans Day Ceremony at the Navy Memorial on Monday. The Thai guys do a a great job making the wreaths from the local flowers.﻿

Back in June and July a couple of film makers stopped by to shoot an episode of "Wild Hawaii" for the Animal Planet Network. I found out on Tuesday that it was airing on Tuesday, so I didn't get a chance to tell you about it. Sorry about that. I hope some of you chanced upon it. If not, maybe you can check the online schedule to see when it will rerun? ﻿

We had another beautiful sunrise on Friday.

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The birds are filling up the parade field and stomping down all of the tall grass.

Three more birds are coming to join the rest.

The grapefruit in the orchard are almost ready to pick. The oranges are a bit further along.

﻿A small fishing boat washed up on Eastern a couple of weeks ago. It looks like it might be tsunami debris from Japan. We're checking into it and I'll let you know what we find out about it.

The orchard has about 15 or so trees....oranges, lemons, limes, & grapefruit. It's on the block west of the Navy Memorial/bowling alley, north of the transportation building, and south of the gym. The transom of the boat is torn up so it would take some repairs, and we don't really need that kind of boat, so I'm not sure what we'll do with it yet.

About Me

After high school I went into the Navy doing nuclear power stuff on a submarine. After 6 years, I left the Navy then got my biology degree from Montana State Univ. I then worked for the USDA doing human nutrition research for 8 years. I also got my Master's Degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of North Dakota. While doing that I worked for Mr. Ellie Pooh selling elephant dung paper (google it) to help the Sri Lanka elephants. After that, I did the only logical thing with my MS and moved to Cleveland, OH and got a job in security at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It was great, for a while, but I found a 1 year temporary job at Midway Atoll with the US Fish & Wildlife Service. I loved it so much that I moved to an even smaller island with only 4-15 people (Tern Island). After being the Asst Manager, then the Manager, I got the chance to go back to Midway as the Wildlife Biologist for a few more years. Just so you know, I didn't write this as an employee, I just commented about my days here and put up some photos, so these aren't the views of the FWS. I still do ocean work for the FWS, but I do it from the Headquarters office in the Washington D.C. area.